Search

What are the main conditions that any theory of human rights should satisfy to guide action? If agents must take action for a fairer world as human rights discourse suggests, this is a crucial question to reflect upon. In this paper, I make a proposal. I argue that any theory of (moral) human rights that guides action on the basis of correlative duties must satisfy three key conditions. The first condition is focused on the specification of act-types, the second concerns the distribution of correlative duties, and the third is focused on the resolution of (resolvable) conflicts of human rights. I show that this proposal has substantive implications because it implies to reject, challenge and, in some cases, resist ideas that are commonly accepted in the literature on human rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The case study presented in this article analyses the social construction of India's Right to Food Act of 2013 in light of the extant literature on the social construction of human rights. It argues that Lockwood's novel hypothesis – that human rights are created by elite actors using the enhanced 'moral and material resources' that they have at their disposal, not in their own self-interests, but in the interests of the less advantaged – is borne up by the present case study, (although less advantaged social actors were involved in the campaign for the Act). The article also seeks to extend Lockwood's theory by examining which moral and material resources contributed the most to the creation of the Act and why. Finally, drawing on Waters, the article proposes that political elites' need to consolidate political support was an important factor in securing the Act. In conclusion, this paper argues that further research on the perceived needs of the less advantaged in respect of the Right to Food Act's content must be undertaken if we are to be sure it genuinely reflects their interests. The article is based on in depth socio-historical research including a review of hundreds of documents and 37 interviews. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses issues on contractual liability and the theory of contract law. Other topics include the theory of contract as a promise, the concept of Oliver Wendell Holmes on the strict standard of liability for contractual breach called Holmesian account, the instrumental theory of strict liability, as well as the basic efficient breach theory.

Conventional global justice theory expresses a concern for the suffering of individuals around the world, yet very often the experience of those individuals plays little role in the work of theorising global justice. In this paper I argue that global justice has tended to take an architectonic approach in which the theorist orders the world by offering idealised principles of justice that serve as guides to necessary global reforms. This approach draws on a flawed geography of injustice, in which the world is divided into just and orderly regions that must save unjust and disordered regions, while also misunderstanding the causes of injustice. In place of this architectonic approach, I offer a consummatory approach that conceives of justice as a quality of social relationships and which draws on the experience of individuals suffering injustice, using the Grenfell Tower fire as an example. This consummatory approach is then further developed by outlining a situationist global justice theory drawing on the philosophy of John Dewey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the contemporary political world order that continues to be structured by the principle of national sovereignty, the fate of human rights ultimately depends on states as the main guarantors and transgressors of rights. The analysis of the conditions and processes of their effective institutionalisation therefore requires a focus on the state level without losing sight of human rights’ universalistic potential. This article develops the ideal type of the human rights state as a sociological framework for the systematic qualitative study and assessment of human rights institutionalisation. To this end, it reconceptualises Benjamin Gregg’s normative political theory of the human rights state as an analytical yardstick that refers to the necessary conditions for the effective implementation of human rights as locally valid, state-based norms of universalistic scope. Based on the extrapolation of human rights’ core traits and their synthesis into a unified, coherent concept, the ideal type of the human rights state provides guidance for the empirical study of factual processes of human rights institutionalisation within states both as an analytical grid and benchmark for their critical evaluation. By integrating the divergent perspectives on legal, political and wider societal dimensions of human rights institutionalisation, this article contributes to the multidisciplinary field of human rights research as well as to the developing field of human rights sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We introduce this special issue on Benjamin Gregg’s recent theory of a human rights state by contextualising it within current human rights scholarship and explicating its core claims, before we provide an overview of the eight contributions. We argue that the concept of a human rights state addresses two interrelated problems within human rights research by bridging the significant disconnect in the literature between human rights theory and practice. First, it conceives human rights as socially constructed norms whose reach and validity are historically contingent, depending on their free embrace and effective implementation by their local addressees. In this way it dispenses with the ever fruitless, even counterproductive attempts to advance human rights by claims about their putative, ultimate normative foundation. Second, it overcomes the limitations and failures of the top-down, generally unenforceable international human rights regime with a bottom-up alternative: the human rights state as a metaphorical polity in which activists promote human rights-friendly change within the corresponding nation state. In each case of such a metaphorical polity, a network of self-selected activists within the nation state promotes the free embrace of self-authored human rights through incorporating those rights in the nation state’s legal and political system. Subsequently, aspirations to an international human rights law would finally be redeemed as effective norms through the overlapping agreement among more and more political communities that have freely embraced their self-authored human rights and institutionalised them at local levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I argue that there are two concepts of distributive justice in play in debates on whether principles of distributive justice apply to the global sphere. Critics of the idea that the scope of distributive justice is restrictedassume, without argument, a particular conception of justice in which justice-based evaluations apply to basic structural institutional actions onlyinstrumentally, whilst applying intrinsically to distributive outcomes for people. I call these outcomes-focused views. I show that at least one view in the literature on global justice, theagency argument, appeals to a distinct concept of social distributive justice where the descriptors ‘justice’ and ‘injustice’, intrinsically apply to the actions of certain types of institutional agents, and only derivatively to the description of states of affairs such as distributive outcomes. This alternative view is treatment-focused and deontological. It focuses on special goods that are only available as a matter of how one is treated by political institutions: relational-goods. It is also sensitive to considerations of fairness in practical reason in ways that outcomes-focused views are not. I show why, on this agency-focused approach, the scope of principles of distributive justice is restricted to how people who are subject to special institutional authority are treated. My main aim in this paper is to demonstrate that on a competitor approach to justice the anti-scope restriction arguments fail, and that the competitor approach is not obviously incoherent. Thus, criticising scope restriction by assuming an outcomes-focused approach to distributive justice begs the question against agency-focused arguments. This shows the real dispute is at a more fundamental level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay engages with several critiques of my project a ‘cosmopolitanism without illusions.’ Who is the subject of rights? What are the objects of rights? Is there a distinction between human and moral rights? Furthermore, what is prior in this cosmopolitan account: democracy or human rights? Do democratic iterations exhaust the meaning of principles of rights? Finally, does the ‘scarf affair’ really signify the return of ‘political theology’ or have not such disputes always accompanied secularization and modernity? I argue that moral rights comprise more than human rights and that non-human beings such as animals can have moral rights claims against us. Democratic iterations and rights complement one another; neither is prior and that although debates about religion and secularization have been endemic to modernity, the return of references to Carl Schmitt’s ‘political theology’ is rather new. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Minimalists about human rights hold that a state can have political legitimacy if it protects a basic list of rights and democratic rights do not have to be on that list. In this paper, I consider two arguments from Benhabib against the minimalist view. The first is that a political community cannot be said to have self-determination, which minimalists take to be the value at the heart of legitimacy, without democracy. The second is that even the human rights protections minimalists take to legitimize institutions cannot be had without democracy. These rights can only be adequately interpreted and specified for any social context if the interpretations and specifications result from democratic processes. Here, I bring out some important problems with these arguments and so conclude that they do not represent a robust case for rejecting minimalism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Across countries, governments are urging civil society, in particular charitable and non-profit associations, to take up a part of the social burden, and to produce and provide critical human services and social goods, either independently or on governments' behalf. This type of privatization, or public–private partnership, is encouraged by many on grounds of pluralism and liberty, as empowering individuals and their associations. In this paper, I aim to provide a liberty-based normative argument against privatization. A common view, supported by both conservatives and classical liberals, is that the more social responsibility is left or delegated to civil society, the more civil society will flourish. I contend, by contrast, that when political societies rely on civil society to provide critical goods and services, individuals' freedom of association is threatened. The consequence of privatization is a multiple loss, in terms of individual freedom, value pluralism and the expressive character of civil society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human rights and democracy have been regarded as a mutually reinforcing couple by many political theorists to date. The internationalisation of human rights post-1945 is often said to have severed those links, however. Accounting for the legitimacy of international human rights requires exploring how human rights and democracy, once they have been decoupled or disconnected, can be recoupled or reunited across governance levels (vertically) and maybe even at the same governance level (horizontally) albeit beyond the state. The article does so in three steps. The first prong of the argument is dedicated to presenting the moral-political nature of human rights and their relationship to political equality and, hence, their inherent legal nature from a democratic theory perspective. The second section of the article then draws some implications for the domestic or international levels of legal recognition and specification of human rights by reference to their legitimation within the domestic democratic community. It explains the mutual relationship between human rights and citizens' rights and where international human rights draw their democratic legitimacy from. In the third and final section, the author discusses potential changes in the nature and legitimacy of international human rights once political structures beyond the state become more democratic, and human rights and democracy are being recoupled again at various levels of governance. The European Union being one of the most advanced examples of post-national political integration, recent developments in the regime of human rights protection within the EU are discussed in this new light. In a final step, the transposition to the global level of the argument developed in the European case is assessed and the author flags issues for further research on what democratic theorists should hope for in the new global order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we defend a moral conception of cosmopolitanism and its relevance for moral education. Our moral conception of cosmopolitanism presumes that persons possess an inherent dignity in the Kantian sense and therefore they should be recognised as ends-in-themselves. We argue that cosmopolitan ideals can inspire moral educators to awaken and cultivate in their pupils an orientation and inclination to struggle against injustice. Moral cosmopolitanism, in other words, should more explicitly inform the work that moral educators do. Real-world constraints on moral action and the need to prioritise one's sometimes conflicting responsibilities will often qualify cosmopolitan justice as supererogatory. This fact does not absolve persons from aspiring to see themselves as having the moral obligation to help others in need, while recognising that their factual obligations are more modest in being bound by what they are actually able to do. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction to articles published in this issue is presented including Justice and Beneficence, Two Concepts of Justice: And of its Scope and Extreme Cosmopolitanisms Defended.

Global justice is, at its core, about moral obligations to distant others. But which obligations ought to be included is a matter of considerable debate. In the discussion that follows I will explicate and challenge two objections to the inclusion of foundationally positive obligations in our account of global justice. The first objection is based on the proposition that negative obligations possess and positive obligations lack a property necessary for a moral demand to be a matter justice. The second objection is that even the most trivial positive obligation becomes overly burdensome when applied to the global arena. And, though I do not offer any particular substantive account of positive obligations to distant others; I assess some of the implications that would arise were positive obligations to distant others to be included in our account of global justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transnational effects are identified as those economic effects which cross state boundaries. Where these effects are negative, as illustrated by the 'transnational case,' it is asked what the appropriate ethical analysis of such a case might be. If we leave aside a social-distributive justice analysis, for reasons given, then a typical move is to claim that transnational economic effects are analyzable as human rights violations. The paper examines this claim and identifies the specific view of human rights which motivates it; the 'outcomes view of human rights.' It is then shown how the outcomes view of human rights ultimately collapses into social-distributive justice-type standards and so suffers from the same problems raised against using those standards for transnational effects. An alternative approach to human rights is sketched, although a complete theory of human rights is not offered. Finally, a different type of justice analysis for transnational cases is offered in which a form of international justice proper is proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented on human rights in terms of systems of social allocation and provision. It discusses the responsibilities of states in ensuring that citizens are given with the goods, services and protection required in enjoying their rights. It outlines the basic elements of a social provision approach. It also presents the comparison between social provision approach and violations approach and offers two illustrative applications.

The Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006 represents a significant development in UK law. It extends the offence of incitement to racial hatred set out in the Public Order Act 1986 to make it also an offence to stir up hatred against persons on religious grounds. As the most celebrated liberal thinker of the nineteenth century, J.S. Mill might be expected to offer some lessons about the possible dangers of this sort of legislation. A Millian response to the 2006 Act is developed here by first applying Mill's famous defence of free speech to the Lords amendments to the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill 2005 and then by looking at potential cases in which even freedom of expression loses its immunity when this is necessary to prevent harm to others. Three versions of the harm-prevention justification for liberty-limiting restrictions are assessed and it is argued that the most promising version is the claim that it may be permissible to punish incitement to racial and religious hatred not so much because it is itself a kind of harm but by virtue of the acts of discrimination, violence and injustice that are more likely to occur within a climate of hatred. Ultimately, however, this rationale must be weighed against what is, for Mill, the special value of free speech and may in the end justify intervention in only the most acute cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What may the Third World expect from international law? To answer this question, one must begin by interrogating the meaning of the terms ‘Third World’ and ‘international law’. This article argues that the meaning of the term ‘Third World’ has historically had layers of complexity to it, and it crucially includes not only states but also peoples. On the other hand, grand narrative traditions of the rise and growth of international law remain typically concerned with its ‘lawness’, the changing nature of its subjects, and its sources. Arguing against such an understanding from a sociological perspective, the article argues that no longer can the re-make of contemporary international law be understood as the exclusive law of the West. It must recognise the authorial role played by the Third World in all its complexity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]